Jubilee Non-Jubilation

Well, here we are, three-quarters of the way through the extended Jubilee weekend and I still haven't really engaged with it all. I mean, even as I write this, I'm simultaneously flicking through the TV channels trying to find something other than that bloody Jubilee concert to watch. Damn it, even Prince Philip has had himself admitted to hospital in order to avoid the ordeal of sitting through Gary 'Tory Twat' Barlow's attempt to get a knighthood. I always thought that popular music was meant to be edgy and represent the voice of rebellious youth, yet these bastards just can't wait to be drafted into the service of the establishment, helping to validate and prop up our discredited class system. Really, anybody who performs, in any capacity, at this bloody concert has completely discredited any claim they might have had of being somehow 'radical'. As for Gary Barlow, someone needs to kick him in the balls. You see my problem? I started this Jubilee weekend determined to prove that I wasn't my republican father, but instead seem to have ended up even rantier than he ever was.

I really tried to get into the spirit of things over the weekend, even though I never got to that anti-Jubilee party, mainly as a result of my laziness. But I did watch the Royal rive pageant on TV yesterday and, to be frank, was bloody disappointed. When they said that lots of boats would sail past the royal barge carrying Her Majesty (and her fascist regime), I didn't think that they meant, quite literally, rowing boats. I was honestly expecting some proper boats, even ships, in the pageant, rather than the motley collection of vessels that actually turned up. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I'd hired a boat myself and gatecrashed it. I needed something like the one the Bond-villain Largo used in Thunderball - it appears to be a conventional motor yacht until the Navy turns up, then the front part turns into a hydrofoil and races away from the rest of the boat. Just the thing for the moment that the river police realised that I was an interloper. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted. I did wonder, whilst watching this so-called pageant, whether surface-to-air missiles had been located on the roofs of local blocks of flats to protect our head of state from possible airborne attacks? After all, if such a thing is considered necessary for the Olympics, then why not for the Queen (and her fascist regime)?

I think my main problem over these past few days is that I can't help but keep thinking of how all this expensive pageantry and celebration is going on against a background of economic austerity and savage attacks upon not just our public services, but also our civil liberties, by our right-wing government. Here we are, being urged by this same government and its friends in the media, to celebrate the fabulously wealthy and over privileged anachronism that is the Royal family, whilst many of us our losing our jobs, having our wages and pensions cut or seeing the public services we rely on being slashed. Yet, at the same time, whilst we proles are being told to 'tighten our belts', these living symbols of our feudal past, (a past the government seems determined to recreate), are not just unaffected, but are having millions of pounds of public money showered on them to fund these 'celebrations'. Ah well, there's still another bank holiday to go before it's all over. Maybe tomorrow I'll find something about this Jubilee to enjoy.